Random soundtrack-esque jam track

[Spacehog]

Hi all

I came up with this backing track for another forum I'm a part of, but it's not had much interest as of yet, so I thought I'd post it here as well. It's a 5:42, vaguely song structured set of chords that I think sounds a bit soundtrack-y, and I'm just interested as to what people would come up with to put alongside what's there already. The file is at http://emusynths.martincliffe.com/pk6jmtrck.zip (6.5Mb) and the chords are included in the zip file. It's all just done using softsynths, Korg Wavestation, Spectrasonics Atmosphere and Stylus, and I've got some ideas what I might put alongside, but there are many more talented keyboardists than me here, so see what you come up with :)

Martin

[Taurus]

Sounds good.

Try to work on your timing of notes. It seems easy, but its often quite hard to hit the chords on exactly the right timing. Its easier to play fast then it is is to play slow :)

I like the panflute-like sound you used. Try doing something else in the latter part though. Cause the sweep is a bit too exagerated if you hear it for 3 minutes.

nice work :)

[Taurus]

tip: perhaps add a saxophone solo somewhere in that part i just mentioned

[Spacehog]

Thank you, although it is meant as a backing track, not a complete piece. I'm waiting to see if anyone wants to take it on, and post their version of it! I've got a few ideas for it myself, I think I'm going to try layering some strings on it, although that'll remain to be seen, and I've a jobs list as long as my arm before I get to it!

As for the timing issue, it's the old chestnut of trying to match slow and fast attack sounds, and also a stupid Wavestation patch that was definitely in 4/4, however it didn't matter what you set the tempo to, it only took 3 bars to play the pattern! So that track was recorded at 120bpm, and the rest at 80... er, or something like that, I forget exactly, but I was nearly tearing out what little hair I have left!

Martin

[Taurus]

Hehe i know what your talking about. Ive been facing that attack problem the last couple of days too. Its horrible. Next to that its hard to combine different rhytmic tracks with another and make them be played exactly parallel. -0.1 of a second matters! ;)

Im quite a lot into soundtracks as Im making some for commercial purposes at the moment. Just keep your focus on the shape of the -whole thing- instead of sticking to 1 megacool riff/tune and then basing the rest around it. People often feel pressured to make the rest of the song at the same high quality as they did their kickass starting tune.. Thats even the -wrong- way to do it.
Make sure you like the shape of your whole song, and get that done first, before going into enhancing the rest of your composition.

I hope i make any sense. I got bad english grammar i think lol.
Wanna know more just add me to your MSN ;)

[Axe2Grind]

The wavestation sequence could have been synced to the song via midi clock, I used to have a wavestation and did it this way. I had a little go at this and came up with this :

http://www.grostate.plus.com/_Sounds/Jam_Axe2grind.mp3

I thought I'd do a little piano thing with a sax and lead solo but laid back ...Apart from the out of sync wavestation, I liked it.

[MoonDark]

Axe that piano sound is really nice, what synth are you using to get it ? :D

btw, nice work! :)

[Spacehog]

Yeah, really nice, man. Piano and lead work was lovely, sax took a while to get going, but I really like what you did overall.

As for the sync thing, I was using the softsynth wavestation, so it *should* have been sync'd to MIDI clock (indeed it was, the speed changed when I changed the tempo of the song) but it just didn't tie in with the speed of it all at all, it was most annoying. I just couldn't figure it out at all, it's yet another of my problem I've had with soft synths. I'm gonna give up using them I think, it's far more trouble than it's worth!

Anyway, off to reboot into my music partition and uninstall some of my more irritating and least used soft-synths (the Korg one will be first!).

Anyone else gonna give it a go? (I'll do one once I get my guitar rig plugged back in, I have the feeling I'll add electric piano and strings, and some guitar, to it).

Martin

[Axe2Grind]

Thanks for you're comments guys...
Hey Moondark, I used N.I Kontakt and a Yamaha C3 sample which was about 120Mb. Its a shame I have unweighted keys to play on though....

Spacehog, I see, you have the legacy collection, very nice. Shame to hear of your probs with softsynths, I love'em and they are covenient with the amount of space I have in my studio.Would love to hear your guitar/strings & EP version and would be good to hear other versions too. THere's not enough jamming going on this forum...hehe :D

Thanks for the backing man, was a lot of fun !!!.